We have been promising to get some posts up once we have some internet, so since the internet is working for the moment, I will see if I can get a post up about our experience :)
First of all, we decided that the waiting for a hurricane’s arrival is as exhausting and stressful as experiencing it... it felt like we prepared and waited for a very long time before the Hurricane actually arrived.
On the evening of Monday, October 3, our friends and neighbors Heather Christensen and her four children; Ian, Erik, Joey, and Ellie decided to come to stay with us in our home because we have a concrete roof and they have a metal roof on their house. Heather’s husband, Sean, was half-way around the world in Thailand for some work with their missions organization. Heather had hoped to weather the storm in their own home, but with numerous people asking her to find a safer place, she decided to head our way to ease the minds of others. The following picture was taken of them as they arrived at our home that evening.
Throughout the evening the kids played board games and video games to pass the time.
We filled buckets and water jugs, just in case we needed them and we all kept a close eye on the radar of the approaching storm.
We enjoyed the luxury of electric and internet until we all headed to bed later in the evening. Before going to bed, it had started raining and we would hear bands of wind picking up, but most of us slept for the first portion of the night. Starting at about 1am, the winds and rain really started to pick up and we slept more fitfully, but there wasn’t a whole lot of movement around the house until between 4 and 5am. At that point, I (Tina) walked out of our bedroom to check on the rest of the house. We could hardly hear one another talking without yelling. The roar of the storm outside was tremendous. Heather and her children were all laying quietly in their makeshift beds in our living room, although I soon learned that they weren’t sleeping, either. I walked back into Nathan and Isaac’s room where both boys were sleeping, even though the rain was soaking their beds. I woke them and we started moving their beds away from walls and windows and moved their mattresses into our bedroom where it was drier.
When we walked into Daniel and Josiah’s room, it was obvious that these two had been up for awhile... they had towels stuffed into all of their window louvres, there was a broom sitting in the corner with a rag draped over it and their beds were pulled into the middle of the room. Both boys were in their beds, but Daniel had himself wrapped in a plastic rain poncho to try to stay dry. After they had stuffed their windows with towels, they realized that they were still getting wet, so they turned on a flashlight and realized that it was “raining” from their ceiling. At that point, they went to the hall closet to get a broom and rag which they used to “mop” the ceiling. This only solved the problem briefly. So, we moved their mattresses into our room, as well, and our night of sleep was over.
By this time, everyone in the house was up and about trying to peek out the windows to see the damage that had occurred as the sun began to peek through. We could see trees down everywhere and soon realized that the back portion of the concrete and metal wall between us and our neighbor had come crashing down along with some of the trees. The next couple of hours were passed by listening to the storm, peeking through the windows, and the kids started to play some more board games by lantern light, since there was no longer any electric, internet, or water.
There was a lot of time spent looking out the windows to watch what the wind and rain continued to do around us.
The kids even got a little creative and made a green, glowing eyeball out of an old lightbulb before the rain and wind started to subside and we ventured out to take a closer look at the damages. We will save those pictures for the next post.
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